These are pictures from Elizabeth City, Kitty Hawk and the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. These images have appeared on my blog before, but this is the first time I have put any of them together in book form. If you like the book, you can buy a copy. It is printed on top-quality Fuji Crystal Archive paper, with true lay-flat pages that allow for beautiful photo spreads. I’ll even throw in a free autograph. Seriously. Help a hungry grad student. Treat yourself to some fine art. Celebrate North Carolina’s coastal heritage — all in one move! Buy one!

Click here to view the book in greater detail, or to get your own copy.

We’ve been cautiously letting Abigail have more and more freedom around Samuel. She seems to be able to distinguish him from food now. Our real worry has never been that she would consciously hurt him, but rather that she would trip over him, or forget she was standing beside him and just collapse into a nap. To be so elegant, she is the most clumsy dog I have ever seen.

Our pediatrician encouraged us to let them spend time together though; he thought it was good for puppy and boy to grow old together, although puppy has grown much faster than boy. Up until now, it has always been Abigail that has approached Samuel. She will lick his hands and feet a little, get bored and move on. Today, however, Samuel decided it was time for him to take control of their relationship. He climbed on board and hasn’t looked back since.

Photo by Kristen Anderson

1 Kings 19:11-18

The Lord said [to Elijah], “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of Yahweh, for Yahweh is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before Yahweh, but Yahweh was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but Yahweh was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but Yahweh was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

He replied, “I have been very zealous for Yahweh, God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

Yahweh said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Mehola to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel — all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him.”

NIV

No one likes being told what to do. We all want to find our own way, make deals on our own terms, and build lives that reflect our individual concepts of success. Self-sufficiency is a heavily lauded virtue in the 21st century. The great American dream maintains that anyone, willing to work hard and think a step ahead of the masses may find wealth, success, and comfort, so long as he sticks to his guns and doesn’t let the whining voices of naysayers distract him from that purpose.

Today, however, it seems harder than ever to avoid the cackles and hollers of the crowd. We live in a world where everyone seems to be an expert on everything. Parents are being constantly drawn into magazine articles and books written by experts who all claim to have the key to raising good children; the only problem is, most of those experts have never raised any children of their own, and none of their methods seem to match up. Any hour of the day I can turn on CNN and listen to four self-proclaimed experts breaking down the critical issue that’s crippling our government today. They’ll tell me what I need to do about it, who I need to vote for and what club I need to join to fix the country; it all sounds great until I realize if I heeded their advice, I’d have to run in four different directions all at once. Go strolling through the grocery store on a Tuesday evening and chances are you’ll run into a friend and find yourself caught up in conversation about the week. Let a concern about a budding conflict at work slip out, however, and you’ll likely find every shopper within ear shot, whether they have a clue about your life or not, has a piece of advice to offer that will surely clear up the matter once and for all.

There is no end to the “expert” advice available today. New philosophies on living are a dime a dozen; most of them seem so blatantly ridiculous on their face, you just can’t help but say, “Come on man, are you really serious Joe? Can’t you see that listening to that crackpot is just a waste of your time?” But you can’t say that. You try to get the words out, to steer your friend down the right path, but your voice is overpowered by the excited shouts and fury of the crowd, and before you know it, Joe has jumped onto the next bandwagon that just came into view. At the same time, your friend is still firmly parked right where he’s always been: Lost in a sea of noise.

This is the situation the prophet Elijah found himself in as he tried to remain faithful to God amidst a people who proudly clung to an “anything goes” way of life. At the urging of their crooked queen and her puppet husband, King Ahab, the people of Israel began to worship Baal alongside Yahweh. They didn’t want to sever their ties with the Lord completely — you never know when a second opinion might come in handy — but just to keep their bases covered, they figured it would be alright to follow the trend and pay homage to Baal as well. To Elijah, the absurdity of this line of thinking made it laughable on its face. The people couldn’t see it that clearly though. The noise of the crowd, the pressure of the experts, was simply too great. The prophet’s voice, and the people’s reason, were lost in the chatter. So what did Elijah do? How could he show this people the error of their ways? You know what happened next. Elijah proposed a test. He had the people build an altar for Baal while he straightened up the neglected altar of Yahweh. Sacrifices would be made for each god, and which ever god acknowledged the sacrifice by consuming it with fire — proving his deity with supernatural power — that was clearly the god to follow. The people agreed. They built their altar to Baal, but crying out to the phony god didn’t seem to be working. Elijah, being the human that he was, couldn’t help but rub it in their faces a little. “Maybe Baal is sleeping. Or maybe he’s relieving himself,” Elijah teased. “Shout louder, then he’ll hear you!”

Then Yahweh showed up. He lit up his altar with a fire and heat the people hadn’t known before. Scripture tells us that the flames licked the water out of the moat Elijah had built around the altar. If that wouldn’t get the people straight, what would? The people believed all right, at least the ones who were there, at least for a little while. Elijah had done it. He had given the job his all and he had made good on his claims. The prophet was a model of success. But his troubles were just beginning. Queen Jezebel didn’t take Elijah’s rebuke sitting down. She wanted his head, and normally what Jezebel wanted, Jezebel got.

So Elijah, the great model of success — the symbol of a job well done; the man who had all the answers — very quickly found himself in a place where he needed some help. Elijah needed some good advice.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because we have an abundance of cheap, one-size-fits-all advice floating around in the world today that good advice has become a relic of the past, or that quality guidance isn’t worth the trouble often required to find it.

John D. Rockefeller, the famous oil tycoon of the 19th century who still, all things considered, holds claim to the largest fortune amassed in a single lifetime, wasn’t above heeding good advice. Of his wife Laura, Rockefeller once said “Her judgment was always better than mine. Without her keen advice, I would be a poor man.”

A modern-day tycoon, Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google, told CNN Money in 2009 that one of the keys to his success was hiring a coach to guide him through the murky waters of business dealings. Schmidt didn’t come to this realization easily though. “Why would I need a coach? Am I doing something wrong?” Schmidt thought to himself when the idea was first proposed. “My argument was, how could a coach advise me if I’m the best person in the world at this?” Then Schmidt realized a coach doesn’t come in to take over the game for you. A coach doesn’t even play the game. A good coach gives you the advice you need to be the best you can be at the game you play.

Abraham Lincoln, faced with the most difficult circumstances a president could imagine, also knew where to turn for advice when all other options seemed bleak. Following the Battle of Gettysburg, considered by most historians to be the turning point of the Civil War, Lincoln spoke with Gen. Dan Sickles, who had witnessed the travesty and successes of that pivotal moment first hand: “Well, I will tell you how it was,” Lincoln, always the statesman, began. “In the pinch of the campaign up there (at Gettysburg) when everybody seemed panic stricken and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told him that this war was his war, and our cause his cause, but we could not stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. … And after that, I don’t know how it was, and I cannot explain it, but soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into his own hands and that things would go right at Gettysburg, and that is why I had no fears about you.” ¹

Elijah also knew where to turn for a word of guidance when all other voices rang hollow. Elijah needed to hear God’s voice! Elijah needed to hear the Lord say that everything would be all right! Elijah needed someone to tell him “get back on your feet and get back to work!”

Elijah knew he needed to hear God’s voice. He wanted to hear God so badly, but he wasn’t ready to listen. He wasn’t in a place where he could pick God’s voice out from the noise of the world. So, Elijah left. He left the place his own work had brought him to and he went looking for God.

Elijah already knew he needed to stay away from his enemies. He was steering clear of Ahab, Jezebel and any others who obviously meant him harm. But Elijah also needed to get away from his friends, from his helpers, his supporters. As encouraging and well meaning as they were, Elijah’s friends were still not the ultimate authority for him, and they were not the ones he had to answer to when his work was done. So Elijah went off, alone, to find a quiet place. Finding peace wasn’t easy though. Elijah didn’t walk into a quiet office and find God sitting in an easy chair ready to hand over the plan. Scripture tells us Elijah spent an entire day in the wilderness, where he became so discouraged he simply wanted to die. He asked God to let him give up, to let him quit. Elijah cried: “It is enough; now O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” But despite his frustration, his emotional emptiness, and the scattered, distracted state of his own mind, Elijah still wanted to hear God’s voice. So he continued in the desert for 40 more days, each day getting a little further from the things that had been distracting him.

When we’re tired of listening to the dull drone of this world, or when the sweet words of our companions just don’t have the kick we need anymore, we have to be willing to put ourselves in a place where we can hear God speak. We have to be willing to take the time to search for a spot where we can clear our minds, where the distractions that keep calling out to us can’t reach us anymore. Sometimes trying to ignore the world around us simply isn’t enough. Sometimes turning off the t.v. and putting up a mental wall to protect us from the noise on the street just doesn’t cut it anymore. We must be able to recognize that. If we truly believe the message God has for us is worth listening to, we must be willing to go through the trouble of finding a place of quiet solitude; A place where we can hear him speak.

Elijah found his place in an empty cave, on a desolate mountain in the middle of the wilderness. The Spirit of God had led him there. Elijah knew it was the place he needed to be, and he was willing to go through the trouble of clearing off his agenda, of rescheduling his appointments and going to this place where he could meet with the Father.

Still, the voice of God didn’t ring out loud and clear. The account of Elijah’s encounter with God is one of the most poetically moving stories in scripture:

“Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.”

How often do we want God’s guidance to be as clear and obvious in our lives as a hurricane. There isn’t much anyone can do to deny a hurricane. Caught in the middle of a storm, the reality of the situation is all around. The fallen trees, the ruined houses, torrential rivers running down city streets, overturned cars and broken power lines — everything declares the truth of the situation. This is a hurricane. But that would be too easy. God doesn’t typically speak that way, and Elijah knew it. He knew that God’s fiery, undeniable message to the prophets of Baal was not something he could expect every time he needed a word from the Lord. Elijah knew he would have to be patient, and he would have to listen closely to what was coming next.

“After the fire came a gentle whisper.”

Other translations describe this word of the Lord coming as “a sheer silence.” Either way, it was something Elijah would have likely missed had he not been deliberately, patiently waiting for it.

A reading of this text begs the question “How did Elijah know what to listen for?” How do we distinguish the voice of the Lord from the other unexpected storms that come our way? Elijah knew what to listen for because he had heard God speak before. Long before God brought down fire to consume Elijah’s sacrifice at Mount Carmel, Elijah had seen the way God spoke through scripture. Elijah knew the stories of Moses, of Joshua and Gideon, of Samuel and David. Elijah knew the scriptures and the stories of his people. He had heard them, and studied them and told them so many times, that the God they described was not just a character in a book. The God they described was a real deity, who loved his people and cared for them. By the time Elijah had a personal encounter with God, he already knew the sound of God’s voice, he knew the rhythm of the stories God told and he knew the purpose God had in mind for his people, for his world. When God spoke to Elijah, he didn’t have to bring him up to speed on the mission, on how the world had gotten to the point it had or why he cared enough to reach out to the people of Israel — Elijah already knew all of that, so God could get on to the details of the day, of the present assignment and the immediate obstacles that needed to be overcome.

If Elijah knew God’s voice from his study of scripture, how much more prepared should we be to listen to God today! We have nearly four times the sacred texts that Elijah had at his disposal. We live in a world that has not only experienced and recorded the messages of God’s prophets and kings, but we have a record of the life, the teachings, and the Word of God’s very son! We have the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Are we any better off for it? Do we study the scriptures to understand God as Elijah surely did? Studying the scriptures is not a task reserved for pastors and scholars; It is the first step Christians must take toward knowing God.

After Elijah received his message, he didn’t keep it to himself. He went right away and confided his experience with other believers. He took his interpretation of God’s message and went to find out what other, trusted believers thought about it. The prophet went, as God had commanded, to anoint a young man, Elisha as his successor. Elijah shared his vision with Elisha. He didn’t force it upon him as a decree, but he confided it to him in an effort to seek confirmation. Elijah found his successor ready, and most importantly, willing, to step into the role God had prepared him for. Elijah found confirmation of God’s directions in his relationship with other believers. God had told Elijah to find these three young men — Elisha, Hazael and Jehu — and set them to work. All along, though, God had been leading these other faithful Israelites toward the same goal. Their life experiences and their relationships with God confirmed Elijah’s interpretation of God’s message for him, and it was only after confiding in them, and listening to them, that the instructions God had given Elijah began to make sense.

Picking God’s voice out from the crowd isn’t always easy. It certainly wasn’t easy for Elijah. With so many voices competing for our attention today, we must strive to be evermore diligent as we seek to follow his will for our lives. Finding a time and a place to be still and listen for God’s voice is essential for anyone hoping to draw closer to him. Living lives that put us in constant fellowship with the scriptures and with other believers is key to staying within the boundaries of God’s will, and a sure way to find yourself growing into the Christ-like servant each of us longs to be.

Each week we spend several hours visiting a multitude of ministry sites and service agencies, listening to staff, asking questions and talking with the people they serve. Though each organization has a unique mission statement and a slightly different target group of clientele, I think it’s fair to say that all of them are focused on making the world, and specifically central North Carolina, a little better representation of the Kingdom of God.

Several of our visits have been incredible, eye-opening experiences, but this week was particularly meaningful for me. We didn’t have a regular class session this Monday because of the holiday, but we were still assigned independent visits for the week. So Saturday night I found myself sitting in the back row of my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I needed to attend the meeting for class, but apart from school, this was an important moment for me as someone I am close to was celebrating a new Spiritual Birthday — the one-year anniversary of an addict’s last commitment to get clean and stop using. It was much more exciting, and more important, than celebrating a biological birthday.

As I sat through the meeting listening to speaker after speaker giving personal testimonies, reading passages from the NA book and encouraging one another through their struggles, I was struck by the simple honesty that pervaded the group. Every time someone stood to speak, whether it was to deliver a keynote speech or to ask a short question, the first words to come out were always “I’m David (or Charlie, or Bobbie or Rachel) and I’m an addict.” It didn’t matter if the speaker had gotten high that morning or if he had been clean for 30 years. There was not a stigma of shame or embarrassment associated with the label — something I’m sure takes many, many meetings like this to overcome — it was just the simple truth. “I’m a human, and I’m an addict.” These were authentic people.

I left the meeting that night wondering what the world would be like if everyone was as honest with themselves, and as authentic with others, as this group of humble addicts. I went home. I went to bed. Then I went to church.

Our Sunday school passage that day came from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians:

For you all are sons of the light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of the darkness. So then, we must not sleep as the rest, but must stay alert and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we are of the day, we must stay sober by putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, our hope for salvation.

For God did not destine us for wrath but for gaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that whether we are alert or asleep we will come to life together with him.

Therefore, encourage one another and build up each other, just as you are in fact doing.

1 Thessalonians 5:5-11 (NET)

Paul is writing to the church in response to questions the believers had about the Parousia, but his instructions are meant to be a guide for daily living at all times, not just in the final days.

The metaphor of light and darkness is an oft used one. In my experience, Christians like to think of living in the light as leading a righteous life; that is, avoiding the major pitfalls of sin and obeying God’s law to the letter. In contrast, being a child of darkness implies living a life marked by sin, day-in and day-out; a life totally separate from God and the law.

I think there may have been a little more depth to the “light” Paul spoke of than we tend to acknowledge; we have a way of trimming God down to size when he gets too big for our tastes. From time to time, we may fool ourselves into believing we are living righteously, pleasing God with our good works and outdoing those poor fools who still choose to walk around in darkness. I heard it said today that there are really only two kinds of people in the world: Baptists, and sinners. I’m afraid a handful of people from my own faith tradition aren’t the only ones to fall into this trap of ignorance. Such thinking proves at least one fact with absolute certainty — those who call themselves righteous have yet to stumble out of the dark their religion has pulled them down into.

I think the “light” Paul spoke of is best described not as righteousness, but as truth. Truth with God, truth with others, and especially truth with one’s self. Jesus has called us to live our lives within the truth of his Creation, of his Divinity, of his Humanity. We must accept the truth that we will never measure up to the righteousness of God, but we can accept his Grace and continue striving to live within his will for our lives.

Unfortunately, we live in a world that doesn’t put much value in authenticity or in truth. We put on different facades when we go to work, when we go to school, when we go to church, when we’re out with our friends and when we’re at home with our families. It’s expected of us, and those who don’t follow the status quo are often penalized for their lack of conformity.

What would happen to our world if our churches began to live and breath with the same spirit of honesty and truth that pushes that group of recovering addicts to better themselves, to value true fellowship over fleeting pleasure and to walk together on the journey that leads them closer to God? What would happen if before I got up to deliver the invocation this Sunday, I felt compelled to tell the congregation that “I’m David, and I am a sinner,”?

I think we would begin to see the light of Christ a little more clearly.

The rest of my group had made it to Caswell early in the afternoon. My summer class ran long and I wasn’t able to leave Raleigh until nearly 7 p.m. By the time I got to the western bank of the Waterway the sun was just slipping under the distant horizon, leaving a telltale stream of orange clouds in the evening sky. As my Jeep lurched to the top of the bridge, Oak Island light station let off four quick blasts of brilliant white light, like a battery of cannon fire hurled right at me. Coastal highways seem to give my iPhone a hard time with navigation, but as long as I could keep the lighthouse in sight, I would be fine.

I pulled past the guard house and made my way to the barracks. The sun was gone now; darkness had settled in for the night. I parked the Jeep, said a quick prayer and sat in silence for a moment, letting all the worries and unfinished tasks from the last few days drift out of my mind so that I might focus on the week ahead.

I climbed out of the Jeep.

My shoes nestled into the soft beach grass as my lungs began to soak up the warm, heavy coastal air. I glanced over at the ruined fort to find my path to Hatch Auditorium, where our youth group would be finishing up their first night of worship. I set off towards Hatch, pushing through the gentle sea breeze that flowed over the tops of the dunes — my path clearly marked in the darkness by the soft glow of a yellow moon.

I had seen Fort Caswell many times before, but this time was different. My first visit to Caswell was years ago with my dad; as a young boy, the concrete tunnels and musty storerooms buried under the dunes provided endless opportunities for adventure. When I returned as a 17-year-old on a summer youth retreat, the fort still held a certain level of intrigue, but my free time was taken up with finding a quiet moment alone on the beach with my love interest at the time.

Tonight is different. There are no sounds of gulls chirping or kids playing; the only noise that pierces the silence is the occasional rustling of sea oats, stirred to life by the soft breeze. As I stroll alongside the ruined fortress — concrete pillars laced with black streaks from centuries of abuse by wild weather, yet still doing their best to hold up the crumbling brick walls — the fort begins to speak to me with a new voice. It tells a story of great sadness, and great joy; a story too complex for me to listen to in my youth.

Tonight, as I stroll alongside this squat fortress from another time and era, I am swept away to Nuremberg. I see the grand parade grounds, the grassy plains surrounded by a stadium apparently built for giants, though no one seems to know where the giants have gone off to; their playground sits empty and neglected. I see the grand coliseum — a massive structure seemingly lifted straight out of ancient Rome and planted in the German country side, where it was nurtured and allowed to grow far beyond the vision of its original architects.

In the years following World War II, the German people had to make a tough decision about what to do with these grandiose building projects of the Third Reich. They were the work of a regime that stole its power from the souls of innocents; they were tools used to oppress the unwanted members of society and boost the already dangerously inflated egos of those in power. They were also public works projects that had cost a great deal of public resources. Should they be maintained and used by the new government, or should they be destroyed as a symbolic act of total rejection of the Nazi movement?

The solution to the dilemma was an ingenious compromise; Germany did both. These monuments, built to celebrate the “triumph of the will” that drove the National Socialists, were to be left standing, but they were not to be maintained or used in any official capacity. The coliseum was left intact, but unfinished. The parade grounds formerly used to organize and prepare the Third Reich’s elite fighting force were open to the public, now to be used for soccer matches, picnics and kite flying. The icons of the Nazi party were quickly destroyed. The core stone work endures, but it continues to take further abuse from vandals, edged on by the inevitable decay of time and nature. Nothing is done to preserve the sites, but neither are they officially condemned. Their foreboding presence is a haunting reminder of what has been; a constant admonition of the danger that always lurks in the shadows whenever men gather.

In much the same way, the gutted remains of Caswell stand as a physical reminder of our own dark history. This fortress from the American Civil War has it’s own story to tell, and it is largely a story of human tragedy — even if our war-infatuated culture doesn’t like to freely recognize the evil that drove that conflict.

Yet Caswell’s story doesn’t end in tragedy. As my walk draws to an end, I remember the wonderful vacation I shared here with my father — one of the few trips we took together that has only memories of laughter, joy and discovery attached to it. I think of the camp week I spent here as a high school student, of the friendships that were nurtured under ancient live oaks and on grassy dunes. I think of the love I share with Kristen, and how the time we spent together at Caswell laid the foundation for our relationship to take root and grow. I imagine the thousands of young people who have encountered the Living God of All Creation here for the first time, and the many more who allowed a few days of solitude at Caswell to loosen the chains that had been preventing their faith from taking root, from digging deeper into the life and mission God has called them to.

I stop when I get to Hatch. The sounds of worship leak out through the stone walls and fade away into the night. I take another deep breath of sea air, and I’m filled with one thought.

Isn’t it just like God to take something like Caswell — something scarred and broken by human hands — and do something wonderful?

I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next.

Photo by Kristen Anderson

in High Definition

If you haven’t seen a demo for FaceTalk yet, take a look. If you’re a tech-type person and you still don’t follow Apple news, you may be interested to know that FaceTalk is going to be released under an Open Source license as well. That’s Apple Computers’ proprietary technology — with an Open Source license. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

Doesn’t that just make you want to run out and buy an iPhone for everyone in your family? It sure makes me excited, and, although I’ve had a computer with video chat capabilities for years now, I’ve yet to go through the trouble of setting one up. Why is it that everything just seems so much more meaningful when it’s packed into a 3″ x 5″ glass box that you can drop into your shirt pocket?

This ad is so powerful because it’s not selling you an iPhone; it’s selling you a connection to your loved ones. It doesn’t spend an ounce of energy showing off the ridiculous capabilities of this new handheld computer; it shows you how your friends and family will smile when they know you’re calling.

Companies have been using this strategy more and more lately. When I worked for Chick-fil-A, establishing emotional connections wasn’t just a part of our marketing strategy, it was the key mission that drove the business model for the corporation. Whether it was preparing a special sandwich just the way a customer liked it, greeting regular guests by name, offering first-time guests a free sandwich, no strings attached, or refilling drinks before customers even realized they were running low, everything that Chick-fil-A does is about building emotional connections with customers to keep them coming back week after week.

It works. Chick-fil-A knows it. Apple Computers knows it. Coca-Cola knows it.

Understanding this emerging marketing strategy was a big part of my mass communication courses in college. In many ways, it makes me uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel good to know that companies are actively trying to play with my emotions in order to win my business. Is that right? Is that a way to make business more human, or does it take away a little bit of our humanity?

What can the church learn from Apple Computers? How much value do we place on emotional connections within our congregations, to keep people coming back week after week? How much value do we put into establishing emotional connections with people we come in contact with who may not be ready to buy into our theology yet, but want to learn a little more about we’re offering?

As powerful as these ads may be, they certainly don’t reach everyone the first time around. Still, Apple and other companies persist, trying new methods and new techniques to keep their products on the forefront of people’s minds. Is the church being just as persistent in its efforts reach out to new audiences, to those who might have already heard the message, but still haven’t seen the light? Or are we more concerned with repacking our message again and again to make it seem like we’re offering something new without making the personal investment necessary to truly build emotional connections with the people we seek to serve?

Let me know what you think.

First Scripture Reading:

Some time later there was an incident involving a vineyard belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite. The vineyard was in Jezreel, close to the palace of Ahab king of Samaria. Ahab said to Naboth, “Let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable garden, since it is close to my palace. In exchange I will give you a better vineyard or, if you prefer, I will pay you whatever it is worth.”

But Naboth replied, “The LORD forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers.”
So Ahab went home, sullen and angry because Naboth the Jezreelite had said, “I will not give you the inheritance of my fathers.” He lay on his bed sulking and refused to eat.

His wife Jezebel came in and asked him, “Why are you so sullen? Why won’t you eat?”
He answered her, “Because I said to Naboth the Jezreelite, ‘Sell me your vineyard; or if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard in its place.’ But he said, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’ ”
Jezebel his wife said, “Is this how you act as king over Israel? Get up and eat! Cheer up. I’ll get you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.”

So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name, placed his seal on them, and sent them to the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth’s city with him. In those letters she wrote: “Proclaim a day of fasting and seat Naboth in a prominent place among the people. But seat two scoundrels opposite him and have them testify that he has cursed both God and the king. Then take him out and stone him to death.”

So the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth’s city did as Jezebel directed in the letters she had written to them. They proclaimed a fast and seated Naboth in a prominent place among the people. Then two scoundrels came and sat opposite him and brought charges against Naboth before the people, saying, “Naboth has cursed both God and the king.” So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death. Then they sent word to Jezebel: “Naboth has been stoned and is dead.”

As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned to death, she said to Ahab, “Get up and take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that he refused to sell you. He is no longer alive, but dead.” When Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he got up and went down to take possession of Naboth’s vineyard.

Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite: “Go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, who rules in Samaria. He is now in Naboth’s vineyard, where he has gone to take possession of it. Say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Have you not murdered a man and seized his property?’ Then say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: In the place where dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood—yes, yours!’ ”

Ahab said to Elijah, “So you have found me, my enemy!”

“I have found you,” he answered, “because you have sold yourself to do evil in the eyes of the LORD. ‘I am going to bring disaster on you. …’”

I Kings 21:1-21a (NIV)

Second Scripture Reading:

When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the LORD.

The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.”

“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’”

Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.”

Nathan replied, “The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the LORD, the son born to you will die.”

After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill.

II Samuel 11:26-12:10, 12:13-15 (NIV)

A Tale of Two Kings

We all love heroes. As children, our heroes are always the clear good guys — Superman, Batman, Spiderman and Wonder Woman. We look to our heroes to see what we like best about ourselves. Our fictional heroes often personify this goodness. When we see them on the streets fighting the good fight, living honest lives and helping others, it makes us feel better about ourselves because we see a little bit of our own desire in them.

From time to time, though, even the strongest heroes stumble. Every other movie or so, Spiderman seems to stray off the straight and narrow path for a bit, only to recognize he’s not really himself unless he’s there, fighting on the side of good. Every now and then the egotistical, slightly conceited Bruce Wayne leaks through into Batman’s persona.

We turn a blind eye to these flaws in our childhood heroes. Maybe it’s because we’re still so pleased with the overwhelming number of good things they do that we let them off the hook. Or maybe it’s because we see ourselves in their failures too; we understand what it’s like to be human.

Of all the shining heroes of the Bible, perhaps David is the brightest.

David, Israel’s best king, established the temple at Jerusalem, led the people to live within God’s law and brought prosperity to the nation. He would forever be known as “A man after God’s own heart.”

In contrast, Ahab, Israel’s worst king, disregarded the Lord and condoned the worship of Canaanite gods. Ahab ignored the law Yahweh had given to the people of Israel and oppressed the nation. “Indeed,” scripture says, “there was no one like Ahab, who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”

At first glance, David and Ahab are polar opposites. Yet both of these men have committed grave sins — conspiracy to murder and steal

David’s story is a familiar Sunday school lesson. He has fallen into a trap of ever-increasing sin, beginning with his lust for Bathsheba and ending with the conspiracy to murder her husband, one of David’s own top warriors. The prophet Nathan tells David a story about a rich man who takes something that doesn’t belong to him. David regains his moral compass, his sense of what is right and what is wrong. He repents, and God forgives his sins. There are still consequences to his actions, but David’s humble confession allows the Lord’s grace to move into his life, washing away the sin. He will go on to be Israel’s greatest king.

Ahab’s plot to steal Naboth’s vineyard is the final episode in a long series of bad decisions and sinful acts. Honoring God was never a priority for Ahab. At the beginning of his reign, Ahab married Jezebel, the daughter of a rival king. He built temples and altars to honor Baal, the god of Jezebel’s homeland, while neglecting the altar of Yahweh. He oppressed his people. Ahab valued building projects more than the lives of his citizens. At the request of the queen, he had the prophets of God murdered. Even when the Lord continued to bless Ahab, giving him a military victory in what seemed to be a hopeless situation, Ahab disregards God’s instructions about dealing with the enemy king in order to gain a little praise and flattery for himself. We have no trouble understanding how this corrupt king could stoop so low as to plot against an innocent man for a few acres of choice farmland — land the king doesn’t really need at all. It’s simply in his nature. He’s that kind of guy, and Elijah is ready to give him what he deserves.

In “The Message” Eugene Peterson provides a little bit of color in the dialogue between the corrupt king and faithful prophet. Ahab’s “greeting” — if it can be called that — is characteristic of his relationship with the prophet. “My enemy! So, you’ve run me down!” “Yes, I’ve found you out,” said Elijah. “And because you’ve bought into the business of evil, defying God. ‘I will most certainly bring doom upon you, make mincemeat of your descendants, kill off every sorry male wretch who’s even remotely connected with the name Ahab. And I’ll bring down on you the same fate that fell on Jeroboam and Baasha — you’ve made me that angry by making Israel sin.’”

Confronted with the harsh reality of his sin, of what his life has become, David says “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Ahab says “So you have found me, my enemy!”

David confesses his sins because he comes to recognize them as evil.

Ahab admits his sins because he knows he has been caught.

Without hesitation, Nathan offers history’s great king a word straight from heaven: “Your sins are forgiven. The Lord has taken them away.”

“Your sins are forgiven.” Is it really that easy? For God it is. For Nathan it was. For David, it had to be.

Elijah’s answer to Ahab’s confession is just as quick, but not quite as comforting. “’I will destroy you,’ says the Lord. ‘I will bring disaster on you. I will consume you.’”

On second thought, maybe Elijah’s judgment is just as comforting as Nathan’s. Don’t we want a God who delivers swift justice to the evil ones? Don’t we want a God who can look into the hearts of men and separate the sheep from the goats, the righteous from the rebellious, the penitent from the insolent? Don’t men like Ahab — men who let selfish ambition and reckless greed — need to get what they have coming to them? It’s only fair.

David understood this. He knew what was fair and what wasn’t. His strong sense of right and wrong is what ushered Israel into its greatest period of prosperity.

David also understood that he couldn’t do it alone. David’s relationship to Nathan is one of the best prophet-king partnerships in scripture. David appreciates having someone he can trust hold him accountable. He is always willing to listen to what Nathan has to say and considers his advice.

Ahab’s relationship with Elijah is likely the worst prophet-king relationship in Israel’s history. Elijah’s confrontations with Ahab get more and more heated as time goes on, to the point that Ahab seeks to have the prophet killed. Why is it so hard for some people to take good advice, or even to listen to someone who may come from a different perspective?

David also understood that he needed God. Hear the good king’s own words, recorded in Psalm 5:1-8:

        Give ear to my words, O Lord;
                Give heed to my sighing.
        Listen to the sounds of my cry,
                my King and my God,
                for to you I pray.
        O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
                In the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.

        For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
                Evil will not sojourn with you.
        The boastful will not stand before your eyes;
                you hate all evildoers.
        You destroy those who speak lies;
                The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty, and deceitful.

        But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
                will enter your house,
        I will bow down toward your holy temple in awe of you.
        Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
                because of my enemies;
                make your way straight before me.

NRSV

We may say we want a god of justice; a god who punishes evil and destroys liars. It’s true that God hates evil. David told us “The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful.” But thank goodness he didn’t stop there. Our God is not a simple God.

In 1787, the Constitution of the United States marked the beginning of a new era in human society. It set a precedent for how government should be run and how justice should be administered. It has been replicated throughout the world and has withstood the test of time largely because of its revolutionary simplicity. For many people, justice and government, right and wrong, evil and righteousness, are simple things.

Fortunately for David, and for us, our God is not quite that simple. If he was, David would be right there with the worst of them. David’s sins put him in the same class as Ahab. Ahab conspired to murder a man because he wanted to steal his family farm. David conspired to murder a man because he wanted to steal his wife.

“The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful.”

“But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
        will enter your house;
I will bow down toward your holy temple in awe of you.”

History might record David as the great king, the righteous ruler of Israel, but David wasn’t quite so proud of himself. He knew that no matter how good he was, no matter how bad he was, it was ultimately God who had the power to save, and it was only through God that he, the king of Israel, could be redeemed.

From time to time, we may ask God for justice, but I for one am glad that what he offers is not justice, but grace; not judgment, but an abundance of steadfast love.

What, then, is to become of our friend King Ahab? How does he fit into God’s order of things? If there is a limit to this abundant love David spoke of, surely Ahab found it. Let’s go back and listen in a little more on this scene between Ahab and his “enemy,” the prophet Elijah. Elijah has pronounced his sentence on Ahab: total destruction. This is the justice man seeks. This is the justice Elijah cries out for with every ounce of mortal passion within him. This is the justice Ahab deserves.

“When Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes and put sackcloth over his bare flesh; he fasted, lay in sackcloth, and went about dejectedly. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: “Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the disaster in his days, but in his son’s days I will bring disaster on his house.”

I Kings 21:27-29 (NRSV)

This business of the son being doomed for the father’s sin is confusing at first, but rest assured that Ahab’s son gets a fair chance as well. This line tells us more about how each person is responsible for their own choices before God, that is, each child has to seek out God’s grace on his own, not ride into heaven on the coattails of his parents. But that’s another sermon for another day.

What’s important here, is Ahab doesn’t get what he deserves any more than David got what he deserved. They are both helpless victims of God’s abundant, steadfast love. They are two of Israel’s most notorious kings — David is notorious for his general goodwill, his desire to serve his people and to please the Lord; Ahab is notorious for the way he oppressed his people and spent most of his life scorning Yahweh and all those who called on him. They are both great sinners. They are both helpless to save themselves, and, in the end, they both turn to the God of Creation, the God of Love, the God of Mercy, the God of Grace, to redeem them. And he does.

God is still able to redeem us today. He sent his son, Jesus Christ, to demonstrate his love for humanity. Confronted with this desperate need for salvation above and beyond the power of men, the world responded in much the same way Ahab responds to Elijah. “So, Jesus, you have found us out. “

Jesus was scorned, attacked and brutally murdered so that shameful men might not have to deal with their own shortcomings, with their own sins. Even this was not enough to test the limits of God’s abundant, steadfast love. To make his point once and for all, the Lord Jesus rose from the grave. He went back into the world of men — the world that had beaten him away in an effort to beat back it’s own sin. Jesus’ message to us is the same message Nathan took to David, the same message Elijah took to Ahab. “You can’t do it on your own. Admit it. Believe it. And then, once you’ve found your limit, believe in me. Believe in the God of all Creation. Believe in my power to save you. To wash away your sin and give you new life, abundant life, in me.”

This is the message everyone — humble fishermen, sun-burnt farmers toiling away at the family vineyard, and even the world’s mightiest kings — everyone, needs to understand.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes:

We ourselves are Jews by birth [you and I, we are already members of God’s family]¹ and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. … For through the law I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

Galatians 2:15-16,19-21 (NRSV)

I am way behind on pictures, and even more behind on work, so I’m just going to let you sort through these for now. Click a thumbnail to open the viewer, browse through at your own pace and enjoy. If you’re feeling really adventurous, start up some theme music before diving into the pictures.

Just based on the photographic record, it would be easy to wonder where I have been during Samuel's first few weeks. Kristen took this shot to help create a semblance of my presence.

While it was one of the most significant things we have done as a family, naming our firstborn was quite possibly the easiest decision Kristen and I have ever made together. Samuel just fit. We both thought of it independently. We had joked about other names before, but when it came time to make a list, there was only one boy name on it.

There are several reasons why we settled on Samuel, not the least of which is the fact that it’s simply a fine sounding, timeless name.

Samuel became especially significant to me early last year when my position was cut at the newspaper I had been working at and I found myself with an abundance of time on my hands. I began focusing on developing a more disciplined daily routine and one of the big elements in this new routine was an increased level of scripture study, in addition to devotional readings. The first book I decided to explore, for no particular reason at the time, was Samuel. If I want to be honest (and I do) then I have to admit that up until this point, my knowledge of the Old Testament was hazy at best. I knew all of the key stories and characters, but really understanding how those stories fit together and what drove those characters to act like they did had been left out of my Sunday school lessons.

Samuel made the biblical narrative real to me.

First and Second Samuel document the history of the early Israelites during the time of Samuel — the prophet, priest and final judge of Israel — continuing through the rise and fall of the nation’s first monarchs, Saul and David. Reading these stories of Samuel, Eli, Saul, David and Jonathan, I was struck by how very real these men were. These were the great characters of the Bible, the pioneers of our faith, but understanding their journey means understanding that they were not much different from you and me. They were very real men with very real flaws, yet they loved God with all their might and wanted desperately (with a few exceptions) to serve him. Samuel was a great leader and a devout man of God, but he wrestled with the same problems I face today: pride, fear and frustration constantly threaten to hold him back from the tasks God has set before him; he wants his own sons to know the Lord and seek him, but he understands that ultimately he cannot be responsible for their choices; he has trouble reconciling the ideal community of fellowship God has called his people to with the reality of their situation and the desires of the nation. Samuel, David and Saul may have moved in the upper echelons of society, they may have had personal encounters with God too intense for us to possibly imagine and they may have lived in a radically different world 3,000 years ago, but they were still more down-to-earth than most of the people I come across at church, at school or on the street.

Samuel helped make God real for me. My most ardent prayer — my greatest hope and strongest desire — is that he will be real for my Samuel as well.

Another lesson that I learned from Samuel came from a simple phrase often repeated by the biblical author: “Do what seems best to you.” This phrase is repeated, with some variation, throughout the story of Samuel. Elkanah says it to Hannah once it is revealed that she has pledged Samuel to a life of temple service; Saul’s soldiers offer this affirmation to their leader; David uses the phrase as he heeds the advice of his generals; Mephibosheth uses it to express humility before the king

When Eli receives a prophecy of God’s displeasure with him and his sons, he simply concedes: “It is Yahweh; let him do what seems good to him.” When David decides to begin construction on a new temple at Jerusalem, Nathan tells him, “You should go and do whatever you have in mind, for the Lord is with you.” Once Samuel has established Saul as the nation’s first king, the judge leaves the young man with a final word: “When these signs have taken place, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God will be with you.”

When the prophet’s announced “God is with you” to David and Saul, they were speaking to the kings in a particular context. Still, as Christians, we know that God has sent us his Counselor to guide us as we make our way through life. If our desire is to live within the Lord’s will, his desire for us will become clear.

It may be dangerous to simply say “Do what seems best to you,” especially if there is a possibility that our bad choices may be interpreted as God’s bad guidance. An important part of maturing is accepting responsibility for our actions; an important part of growing as a Christian is trusting God to guide us when we seek to make responsible decisions. This lesson from Samuel came to me at an important crossroad in my life, a time when I had to make a responsible decision but no choice seemed absolutely clear. Finding this balance between freedom and faith, between personal responsibility and surrender to the universal, is a constant struggle for me, and I’m glad.

My first wish for my son is that he may come to know God in a real way; to love him and seek him out, just as the prophet, the king and the shepherd boy did many years ago. My second wish is that he may have the faith to trust God with his hard decisions; to have the humility to know that, even if he is a king on Earth, he will never be able to walk the journey alone, but he does need the courage to act in faith — to “do what seems best” — because after all, as Samuel so eloquently said, “God will be with you.”

I’ve barely had time to seriously reflect on my first semester at Divinity School. My summer classes, and a propitious summer internship, will be starting up next week. The house is a mess, and the remnants of my last few home improvement projects still taunt me when I pass through the hallway, but Samuel doesn’t care about that. It doesn’t worry him, and I won’t let it worry me.

Parenthood is good. Already, it feels as though Samuel has been a part of our family all along. I look at him and love him. I take him in my arms, cup his head in my hands, press my belly into the bedspread, prop myself up on my elbows and just stare into his bright blue eyes. Yes. It’s true. I love him.

So many of our “first” moments are flying by faster than I can register them. We met my former boss and wonderful friend Bing Oliver at McDonald’s (his choice, by the way) this week; once the meal was done and the conversation was moving fast it suddenly hit me that this was Samuel’s first time in a restaurant. Sunday night was Samuel’s first time in church. Monday was his first doctor’s appointment. Wednesday afternoon he made it through his first cookout and Thursday morning he made it five hours without waking mom or dad up.

Today we took Samuel to the photo studio for his first big shoot. He did great. I have to give thanks to Ken Tart for having an infinite amount of patience, and diaper wipes. Ken was also kind enough to lend me a spare lens while my 50 mm f/1.4 is being repaired after conking out during Samuel’s first week at home.

Today we also had our first big scare as parents. I’m a natural worrier. I try to keep things in perspective, and I’ve been doing pretty good about letting things go, but having Samuel in our life pushes the potential for worry to a whole new level. I worry when he cries too loud. I worry when he gets too quiet. I worry that he’s too hot. I worry that he’s too cold. I worry about leaving him alone to rest, and then I worry about over stimulation. I worry. Kristen, on the other hand, is not a worrier. Whenever she begins to acknowledge the validity of my worries, then I know it’s time to get serious.

Today Samuel had us both worried. This afternoon we noticed he was breathing heavy when he was awake and wheezing when he was asleep. His doctor’s visit Monday revealed a healthier-than-normal baby (he had gained 14 oz. since he left the hospital four days earlier) so we took a little comfort in that and just kept an eye on him. Then he started crying. And crying. And crying. He was crying like I had never seen a baby cry before. Every now and then he’d take a break from crying to cough a little. Each time he’d cough, I would have an opportunity to suction a sizable chunk of mucus from his mouth. Then the crying would pick up again, and the cycle continued for about 40 minutes. Once he began to lose steam, I swaddled him up and he drifted off to sleep. I called the doctor for advice and was told to bring him in.

Samuel continued to spit up mucus in the car, but by the time we got to the doctor’s office, he was in a smiling, contented state. We described the symptoms to the nurse and got Samuel undressed so she could weigh him. The moment his diaper came off, though, he spewed a mucousy mess all over table and the nurse. It was like he had a Super Soaker 3000, loaded with slime, hidden in his pants. The nurse courageously threw herself between Samuel and her laptop; I had never seen anything like this before, but clearly she had experience dealing with such assaults. We cleaned up the mess and the doctor came in. He checked Samuel over and couldn’t find a thing wrong. Apparently, Samuel had developed a mucus plug that had given him a little trouble breathing, but he managed to expel it on his own just in time to shower the nurse and a moment too early to give the doctor anything to do.

Just in case you were wondering, this time he tipped the scales at 8 lbs. 6 oz. (that’s a post-mucus-explosion weight). It looks like he’ll be catching up to Abigail in no time.

Since we’d already made the drive to Garner, we felt obligated to go ahead and share another “first” with Samuel. For his first taste of Goodberry’s, Samuel decided to order his daddy’s favorite: a regular vanilla mint chocolate-chip concrete.

• 7 lbs. 14 oz.
• 21″
• Absolutely Wonderful

11 p.m.
The Little Prince is lost in space.
Feels like Christmas.
“If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it.” ¹

5 a.m.
“My water broke.”
Abigail is anxious. “Let me out!” ²
The baby needs sleep. Sleep is done.

6 a.m.
Six minutes,
Three minutes,
Three minutes, five.

6:30 a.m.
Questions, forms;
Forms, questions;
Waiting.

7 a.m.
Pain?
Two.
Birth is natural.

9 a.m.
145. 132. 123.
130. 138.
Waiting. Waiting.

10:20 a.m.
“Does it hurt yet?”
“We can make it hurt more.”
Pitocin flows.

11:15 a.m.
High blood pressure.
High voices.
Where is the coffee?

12 p.m.
Stillness.
Gentle heartbeat.
Longing to hold you closer.

2 p.m.
Mountains. Crying. Struggle.
Falling into rest. Surrender.
The next hill approaches.

3 p.m.
The flesh is numb; the heart is heavy.
The end is close, but still so far.
Waiting. Waiting.

3:32 p.m.
Birth. Life.
Love. Family.
Life. Love.

It only grinned a little wider.“Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on:
   “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if only you walk long enough.”

Celebrating Mother’s Day has always been a regular event in my family, but this year offered extra cause to celebrate as Kristen prepares to join the ranks of motherly matrons in our clan. We were blessed with the opportunity to host both of our moms, as well as Kristen’s two grandmas, for a Mother’s Day dinner and a wonderful afternoon of family fellowship.

Mother’s Day also means I get an opportunity to cook for all of the women in our family — a task I really enjoy, but rarely get away with because everyone loves to cook so much. I prepared eight thick-cut, pan-fried pork chops steamed with red onions, squash, zucchini and asparagus. I topped the pork chops with asparagus, drizzled fresh hollandaise sauce over the vegetable-meat combo¹ and left the squash-zucchini-onion medley on the side. White rice and baked macaroni and cheese (which Kristen prepped before I could step in) rounded out the main course; Grandma Mayna brought a Hersey’s chocolate chocolate-chip cake for dessert.

A grand time was had by all.

After lunch, Kristen tried to teach our moms and grandmas a few new stitching patterns to incorporate into the quilt she is putting together for Samuel. I haven’t begun my own quilt square yet, but I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to bond with my brothers, Zachary and Jacob, as the three of us rarely end up in the same room together very often. We jumped head first into Resident Evil for some co-op light-gun action.

And no, those pictures were not posed; that’s just how intense my brother gets when the undead threaten to interfere with Mother’s Day.

Is there anything of greater import to a child than a mother who understands the struggles of life and gingerly guides her children down the path to adulthood? I don’t think so. Kristen and I were blessed with such mothers. It would be impossible to pick out what elements of our personalities, of our worldviews, of our lives, were impacted by our mothers. They deserve much more than a fun day and our heartfelt thanks, but I know that’s all they will accept.

I was reminded again about the critical role mothers play in shaping the perspectives of their children this afternoon while reading a short story. On this one particular street in this one particular village in South Africa lived a great diversity of people: a widowed concert pianists who had taught nobility in London; a retired colonel who had spent his life laying down roots in a multitude of countries across the globe; a few native Afrikaans; two families of American missionaries and a plethora of other expatriates from Germany, Sweden and Portugal. The children living on Kruger Park Street, as is typically the case with children everywhere, didn’t let their varied backgrounds stand between them. Gathering in the street for games and adventure became a regular afternoon ritual. On this day, the children’s game turned out to be knocking on doors, then hiding before the targeted neighbor could get to the door. The children took turns pranking different neighbors as the crowd looked on from a safe distance. As it would happen, one child’s mother found out about the game and was less than pleased. This child was forced to walk back to the house of the old colonel who she had pranked an hour earlier to confess her sin and beg apology. The worst part of the ordeal was that the other children, though equally responsible, seemed to get by unscathed. Still, at least one mother is intent on using the situation to teach her own child a lesson. The apology is offered.

“Very well. Your apology is accepted,” the colonel replied. “And you may thank your mother for caring enough about you to discipline you.” ²

Thanks mom.

Back in March I had a chance to catch up with my good friend Sam. He had recently returned to North Carolina after finishing his graduate program at the University of Colorado. With the blessings of our wives, Sam and I headed to Virginia for a couple days of snowboarding in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sam and I met during our first semester at Appalachian State and ended up rooming together for the next three years, until Kristen finally agreed to marry me and I moved off campus. At ASU — due to location, wonderful student discounts and a general lack of pressing (financial) obligations — the three of us had an opportunity to go snowboarding practically as often as we were up to it; usually three or four times each week. This was the first year I have been able to make it back to the slopes since we left Blowing Rock in 2008. Sam and I spent two days at Wintergreen Resort, near Charlottesville. The weather was perfect, the slopes were fairly well covered and the crowd was relatively sparse.

Knowing how much patience and planning it would take to get any decent snowboarding shots that weren’t cliche, and, more importantly, knowing that I only had two days to enjoy the mountains, I decided to try something different with the camera. As we moved around the mountain, we just pointed the lens in a general downhill direction and held the shutter, blasting off nearly 2,000 still frames of random snowboarding action. I dropped the pictures into iMovie, added a soundtrack and created my first stop-motion video. It’s pretty rough, but you have to start somewhere, right?

Here are a few still shots I pulled out of the reel, in case you missed them.

This is the saddest news story I have read in quite a while, and I come across a lot of sad news. I don’t want to pretend like I understand this situation, because I don’t. I refuse to begin judging Lee based on the facts of this account. I don’t know what may have happened to him the last time a stranger pulled up into his yard. I don’t know what other things he may have seen when he looked out at Williams that added to his picture of the situation. I don’t know what he had been doing earlier that day that contributed to his frame of mind. I don’t know any of that. But I do know that this is a very sad story; one that leads me to grieve for these families and for our world.

Reading this story — and then listening to Lee’s simple, candid conversation with the 911 operators — forced me to wonder what kind of perception he has of the world. Is it characterized by fearfulness: a world where everyone unknown is an enemy intent on doing me harm? Is it characterized by competition? Are other people seen as equally valuable, or is value based on how much I know and understand about an individual’s story? We all look at the world from unique perspectives. More often than not, we let external influences take control of our perspectives; they begin to overlay the glass we see the world through and, eventually, to define what we understand to be reality. Whether these perceptions we have are at all related to actual reality becomes irrelevant. What matters is perception.

Obviously perception played a huge role in the story above, and I hope working to piece together the varying perceptions of those involved will be an important part of the investigation that follows. How do we keep our own perceptions of the world from becoming so skewed we can no longer see clearly?

I thought about my own perception of reality. I love the infinitely complex, yet wonderfully simple way the natural world fits together. Life is simple. It is about food, family and community. God made it simple, but we make it much more complex than that. I sometimes kid myself into thinking that, as I continue to seek to serve God in whatever way I can, that I am comfortable living in this barest of all realities. Then I start to think about what that really means. Does this mean I can be at peace with my situation even if my income does not allow me to save for retirement like I would like to, or to save at all? Does this mean I can be content with drawing closer to God even if I am a complete failure at every task I attempt? Does this mean I am satisfied with my life even if my reputation is fallaciously destroyed? Does this mean I really believe that lying beggar downtown is created in the image of God; that he has a goodness in him that is longing to come out, and I have a responsibility to be Jesus for him so that he might overcome his own false perceptions of reality?

I would like to answer yes to all of these questions, to say that I am content to live within the actual reality that forms the foundation of creation, but I don’t always know that I can. I do care about maintaining a comfortable standard of living for my family. I do care about presenting myself to others in a positive light so that I might enjoy their fellowship. I do care about keeping a clean credit report, about earning college degrees and receiving the approval of those who have come before me. My question then becomes: how much of this comes out of a desire to responsibly execute my own free will, and how much has been laid upon me by the conventional wisdom of the world? After all, Jesus has called us to rise above conventional wisdom and to live in the world as it really is; to live in spirit and in truth.

Prompted by a school project but pushed on by my own interest, I have begun to look at the emerging field of Narrative Leadership. At its core, Narrative Leadership prompts people to begin looking at the world, looking at others, and especially looking at one’s own life, as stories that are being lived out. These stories have recurring themes, but they are constantly open to change. Whether we recognize it or not, our own story directly influences the way we understand the snippets of story we read about the people we come in contact with. These stories combine to form our perception of the world, but as anyone who has ever been touched by a powerful novel knows, every book always has at least two stories to tell; usually many more. Adopting a curious stance and digging into the stories of others allows us to dig into our own story in ways we haven’t been able to experience before. Retelling our stories, allowing others to reinterpret them for us, listening to their stories and piecing the complex narrative together allows us keep our own interpretations in check with reality, to bring them into sharper focus and to develop a clearer image of the world as it really is.

Stories are best when they are shared.

If this discussion has turned into a pot-luck dinner of thoughts that you have no taste for, I apologize. I’m not really sure where I’m going with all of this right now, but I thought the first step in making any sense of it was to get it out of my head and into words.

It’s far too messy in there to keep anything straight.

Sunday evening Kristen and I took a walk (as we often do) through our neighborhood and into downtown Benson. We noticed signs around the neighborhood pointing towards a new coffee shop on Railroad Street, so we strolled down to check it out. The store was closed, but looking through the windows it was obviously a place somebody had put a significant amount of work into — lots of soft seating, a new floor, fresh paint, a cavernous lounge space and did I say lots of soft seating?

We were excited to see the new business, Crossroads Coffee, downtown as there really is not a good place to just go grab a cup of coffee and hang out in Benson. In fact, if you’re not in the mood for bar hopping or Italian food, there really isn’t anywhere to go in Benson after 6 p.m. The downtown community seemed to be on the verge of a serious renewal just a year ago. Several new business have opened in recent months and the Main Street area has received some long awaited upgrades, including new benches, improved landscaping, the opening of a new town history museum and full renovations of several neglected building facades. Still, for every step forward the downtown area has made, it seems like Benson has fallen two steps behind. Some key stores have closed and, this winter, a group of business owners successfully halted plans to create a unified historic district downtown.

With that in mind, it’s definitely a pretty cool thing when a nice, snazzy, spacious, comfortable coffee shop opens just three blocks from our home.

On our walk today we noticed the store had an open sign and a couple of cars out front. Kristen and I walked over. Abigail, our 5-month-old Doberman, was with us, so we took turns going in and seeing what Crossroads was really like. As it turns out, Crossroads Coffee is not just a coffee house. It’s actually called Crossroads Church. Pastor Scott Betts organized the church plant several months ago. About 60 regular worshipers have been meeting in the back of the building while the coffee shop was being built. The building, on the corner of Railroad Street and Parish Drive, has a relatively large sanctuary, a game room and a nursery area separate from the coffee shop, which takes up about half of the building. Betts just completed his M.Div. program in 2008, so we talked a little about school and about what he hopes to see happen at Crossroads.

The church is officially non-denominational but has a doctrine grounded in the Baptist tradition. Crossroads has a regular Sunday morning worship service in their building on Railroad Street, men’s and women’s Bible study groups on Monday nights and a midweek gathering at Betts’ home. On the coffee shop side of things, they are open Monday through Saturday from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., although hours may be extended once the shop gets established. Proceeds from the coffee (which comes from Larry’s Beans by the way) goes back to support the mission of the church. Betts said the church has just hired a worship director, although he continues to work as an electrical contractor and does not yet take a salary from the church. This Friday, at 7 p.m., Crossroads Coffee will host its first musical act — a local bluegrass/gospel band. Betts said he plans to make concerts and open mike nights a regular event. Entertainment will be a blend of religious and secular, but always family-friendly.

Regardless of your church persuasion, the coffee shop atmosphere really is top notch. It’s worth supporting ventures like this to help Benson develop into a more vibrant place to live.

I plan on going back. Let’s meet up some time.

This sermon was delivered at Butler Chapel on January 19, during the first chapel service I had an opportunity to attend as a student at Campbell Divinity School. The guest speaker that day, Dr. J. Kameron Carter, set the standard high; other speakers this semester followed his precedent, making Tuesday morning chapel services an eagerly anticipated staple of my weekly spiritual diet.

Dr. Carter is an associate professor of theology and black church studies at Duke Divinity School. His sermon digs deep into the meaning of Jesus’s miraculous feeding of the 5,000, as recorded in the Gospel of John. Dr. Carter relies on archeological and historical research to move deeper into this text than I have witnessed any other preacher do, yet he still manages to bring it around to the heavy implications Jesus’s actions have for modern-day disciples. If you don’t believe sincere scholarship, extra-biblical sources and a fiery passion for the gospel can hold places in the same sermon, take a few minutes to watch this video and then we’ll talk.

Let me forewarn you, this sermon starts out slow — very slow. I think Dr. Carter knew he didn’t run the risk of having any of his audience leave the chapel early during the service, so he took some time to build up his message for effect. Stick with it and you won’t be disappointed. If you don’t have time to watch it now, bookmark this page and come back to it one day when you’ve got some free time or just feel the need to listen to some quality preaching. Or, if you prefer, you can download an MP3 of the sermon below and listen to it at your convenience. Enjoy!

In writing sermons this semester, I have been trying to find a balance between reverent and colloquial language; between reading an essay and sharing a conversation. I usually find myself erring too much to one side, and then overcorrect the message to the other extreme — either making it so colloquial I fear I may have offended my listeners, or so lecture-like that I begin to bore myself. I don’t think Dr. Carter’s sermon is the best I’ve ever heard, and I wouldn’t hold it up as a perfect model, but I do think he achieves a wonderful balance between the scholar and the friend.

Let me know what you think.
Does this make for an inspiring message, or do you think too much analysis of the situation kills the sermon? If this doesn’t work for you, what elements go into great preaching that you have heard?

One experience from my first semester that has stuck with me has been a lesson on the significance of bread in the history of our society, and in the teachings of Jesus. As 21st century Americans, we have so many options available on the dinner menu that it is hard to imagine being limited to a basic diet for sustenance. Even when we focus on a particular dietary plan, like only eating fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, or sticking to a traditional ethnic diet for cultural reasons, these limits are self-imposed. Imagine not having that choice. Imagine that, in order to sustain your life — to make it on to the next day — you had to eat a certain amount of food, and the only food available to you was bread. It’s true that bread may become dull; eating would no longer be a part of our personal entertainment cycle, but a part of our personal maintenance. At the same time, bread would carry much more significance in our eyes than it does today. Bread would be the source of life. Fresh bread would carry the same intrinsic value as clean water. For a person in need, a person struggling to get by, a person facing the very real question of “Will I make it another day?” a piece of fresh bread is more valuable than all of the gold, oil and finery on Earth — of these treasures, only bread will meet the immediate need; only bread will sustain life.

It’s tough to understand this significance of bread when the questions we really ask ourselves are not “Will I make it another day?,” but rather “Will my checking account hold up until the end of the month? Will my job opportunities remain stable this year? Will I continue moving through school at the pace I need to? Will my personal relationships continue to sustain me, or will I have to invest something more into my friends and family this week?” These questions can seem important to us in the moment, but, to borrow a line from Captain Jack Sparrow, “What it really comes down to is what a man can do, and what a man can’t do.” Without bread, a man (or a woman) can do nothing. This truth was more obvious during the 5,000 years of human history preceding my generation; who knows, it may ring true again one day.

Understanding the importance of bread is key to getting the full impact of what Jesus told the early disciples. When he said “I am the bread of life,” he wasn’t just talking to the few who preferred the taste of warm, buttery bread over chocolate cake or fish tacos. He was telling them that if they wanted to make it on in life, if they wanted to continue another day, if they wanted to do more than scrape by, if they wanted to break free from the oppression of the world and find a sustaining strength that would not fail, they needed to turn to him.

At the beginning of John 6, Jesus meets the physical needs of the people who gathered to hear him speak. In this too-familiar scene, Jesus takes five small barley loaves and two tiny fish from a young boy, splits them up among a crowd of thousands and then gathers 12 baskets full of leftovers. When the excitement of the crowd grew dangerous, Jesus went away to pray. His disciples waited all night, but then, for whatever reason, they decided to get in their boat and sail across the lake back to their starting point (they had sailed to Tiberias earlier in the day so Jesus could preach and feed the crowd). Jesus meets the disciples in the middle of the lake. “They were terrified. But he said to them, ‘It is I; don’t be afraid.’ Then they were willing to take him into the boat.” They made it to the other shore and rested. As morning broke, the people they had left behind in Tiberias — the people Jesus had preached to, cared for and left well satisfied the day before — they came searching for the Messiah.

When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

So they asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

“Sir,” they said. “from now on, give us this bread.”

John 6:25-34 (NIV)

How often do we ask Jesus for a miraculous sign, “that we may see it and believe?” These people from Tiberias had not only spent a full day listening to Jesus preach, they had not only watched Jesus performing miracles before them; they had actually eaten the results of the “miraculous sign” Jesus had given them. Jesus even helped them pack up the leftover miracles for another day! Even Moses and the Israelites in exodus weren’t able to hang on to leftover miracles God provided for them. Still, the people needed more. Their faith was completely dependent on their proximity to Jesus.

Faith is something that is hard to nail down. It’s a very personal thing for most people, but it is best when shared in community. One way I understand faith is as a reminder of what has been, coupled with an assurance of what will come. To put this in real terms, let me use a personal example:

When I was in 9th grade, during a week-long mission trip in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, I encountered the Spirit of God in an incredibly powerful way. I felt the Presence in my body as tangibly as I felt the carpet between my toes. I witnessed my own “miraculous sign.” I understood how Jesus had been working in my life and what I was expected to do next. I was at the peak, enjoying a mountaintop experience. This was not the first, or the last, spiritual high that I had enjoyed. It was, however, the first time that I experienced the Spirit in such a real way and was able to “step back” from myself and recognize my experience for what it was — a true spiritual encounter that would ultimately last for only a brief moment in my life. I reminded myself at that moment that I was a rational, logical human being of reasonable intelligence; I examined my circumstances and I reassured myself that what I was experiencing was real, it was not a product of my own desire or imagination. I told myself to hang on to that moment, because I knew a time would come when I would feel so far apart from God, so separated from Jesus and the power of the Spirit, that I would doubt whether this experience had really happened. I stored this experience up, and I drew on it several times during the years that followed.

I don’t mean to say that faith is something that can be described logically; nor could my experience have been quantified and documented by independent research. But just as the physical self (the life we live, the choices we make and the things we do) is a direct reflection of the spiritual self, maturity in faith is connected, at least to some degree, to our emotional and mental maturity. As Paul says, we can still be babes in Christ and rest assured that he has us firmly wrapped in his loving arms, but how much better it is to be growing in Christ, to be living in a dynamic relationship that always pushes us to the next level of understanding.

At times I still fall into the same rut the people from Tiberias did, but then I stop. I think. I remember what Jesus did for me yesterday. I dig into the leftovers and I patiently wait for him to come again.

I think the temptation with any journey in life is to focus on the standard goal: if the journey is a degree program, the goal is to graduate; if the journey is a job, the goal is to make it to the next promotion, or retirement, without being fired. While these standard goals are valid, I think all of us would admit we hope to get more out of life than simply making it to the end of the road. Taking the time to set personal goals along the way helps us make the best use of our time and energy; they provide inspiration when the road gets tough and the standard goal starts to seem less attractive.

So, here’s what I came up with:

As I spend time at Campbell preparing for future ministry opportunities, I hope to…

• Continue personal spiritual development and formation.

As I move through my formal theological training, I must continuously strive to deepen my own personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the risen Savior and Eternal God of all creation. Alongside my educational pursuits, I hope to develop a regular habit of devotional Bible study and prayer. I plan to focus on developing a style of living consistent with the spiritual disciplines, including daily meditation, constant prayer, weekly fasting, confession and fellowship. As much as possible, I hope to continue charting my own faith development, beginning with the spiritual formation timeline I created during my first semester at Campbell.

• Strengthen my knowledge of the biblical canon.

Through coursework and independent study, I hope to retain a solid overview of each of the 66 books in the Bible, understanding the subject matter, context, issues of authorship, chronology and basic history related to each book, as well as how each book fits into the total canon and how the broader canon affects the interpretation of each book. I hope to develop the skills necessary to conduct scholarly exegesis of the text for the purposes of preaching, teaching, devotional study and personal exploration. I hope to develop familiarity with quality extra-biblical resources, including commentaries and reputable journals that I may turn to for future research and study as I continue building upon my foundation of biblical knowledge.

• Expose myself to the original languages of the Bible.

I intend to study both Greek and Hebrew while enrolled at Campbell. Through coursework, I hope to gain a basic understanding of these primary original languages of the Bible. Following my studies at Campbell, I hope to retain knowledge of key terminology and translation issues relative to both languages. I hope to develop advanced skills in at least one of the biblical languages that I may continue to build upon, practice and reinforce following the completion of my education at Campbell.

• Explore the history of the Christian faith and understand how it affects the theological doctrine of sectarian groups today.

I have a general knowledge of the varying customs and liturgy associated with different mainline churches today, but very little understanding of the differences in doctrine that serve to separate Christians in the 21st century. I believe understanding these doctrinal differences, how they have developed from interpretation of the biblical canon and how they have affected application of the Christian faith throughout history is important to developing effective ministry that seeks to broaden and unify the body of Christ.

• Improve my preaching skills, with a focus on textual accuracy, cultural relevancy and effective delivery.

Through coursework, internships and practicum experience, I hope to develop the skills necessary to prepare regular sermons that are based on sound biblical truths and speak to the needs of contemporary listeners. I hope to improve my public speaking and delivery skills so that I might preach a sermon “naturally” from the pulpit — as if engaging in conversation with the congregation, as opposed to simply reading a prepared essay.

• Develop a ministry strategy that is flexible, but always missions-oriented.

I hope to develop the interpersonal and logistical skills necessary to practice effective evangelism in a variety of cultural contexts and situations, as well as the skills needed to encourage others to do the same. Regardless of the capacity I find myself serving in after Campbell — vocational missionary, pastor, youth worker, family minister, etc. — I hope to maintain a sense of “mission,” living and working in such a way that the message of Christ’s love and salvation is demonstrated to others, instinctively drawing them into the body of Christ.

• Continue to become more self-aware, for the purposes of improving interpersonal relationships.

• Successfully meet all of the requirements necessary for a Master of Divinity, with languages.

I hope to maintain a minimum GPA of at least 3.25 on a 4.0 scale throughout my enrollment at Campbell, developing an academic portfolio that will allow me to pursue advanced graduate education in the future.

Leaving Sunday afternoon, Kristen and I both felt a little perplexed as we reflected on the fact that we won’t be returning to Myrtle Beach until we have a new baby boy to bring with us. Actually, it was mainly just Kristen that felt perplexed; I was too queasy to drive.

  ]]> http://galleryd.net/2010/04/beachsansbaby/feed/ 0 http://galleryd.net/2010/04/radically-simple/ http://galleryd.net/2010/04/radically-simple/#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:25:52 +0000 David http://galleryd.net/?p=1795

If someone thinks he has good reasons to put confidence in human credentials, I have more. … But these assets I have come to regard as liabilities because of Christ.

More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things — indeed, I regard them as dung! — that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness — a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness. My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Paul’s Letter to the Philippians — 3:4, 7-11 (NET)

We have talked a lot about “call” during my first semester at Divinity School. At the beginning of my course with Dr. Michael Cogdill, we focused on the call of Paul, also called Saul.¹ Paul is often used as an example of a person who made a radical change of direction — a complete 180º — in his decision to follow Christ. The phrase “she had a ‘Damascus Road experience,’” referencing Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Messiah on his way to Syria, is common vernacular today. Indeed, considering Paul’s position when he left Jerusalem — “I do not believe Jesus is the Christ” — compared with his stance once he arrived in Damascus — “I do believe Jesus is the Christ” — it is fair to say that he made a total change.

A broader look at Paul’s life, however, shows that perhaps this change wasn’t as sharp as it initially appears to be. Paul had always had a deep desire to know more about God. Although he worked as a tent maker (Acts 18:1-3), not a religious professional, Paul devoted his time to studying the faith and the ancient scriptures. He became a student of Gamaliel (Acts 22:1-3), the most accomplished teacher of his day. Saul wanted to do all he could to please God and serve him, so he joined the Pharisees — a religious-political sect of Jews that followed the rules of their faith, as they understood them, in the strictest sense possible, holding each other accountable along the way. Even among the Pharisees, Saul’s desire to follow the will of God and serve him was unsurpassed (Galatians 1:13-24).

Saul had spent his life studying the scriptures and prophets and knew them as well, or better, than anyone else of his generation. He was a Roman citizen² (Acts 22:22-29), but he had already decided that following God and serving him was more important than focusing on building a career and amassing money. He valued education, he paid attention to the secular philosophies of his day (Acts 17:16-31) and he valued a hard days work. Above all else, however, Saul was committed to serving God, although his understanding of God had been skewed by his narrow focus (Acts 7:51-8:3).

Clearly, Saul was the perfect person to lead the effort of spreading the message of Christ to the world. He had the knowledge, he had the credibility, he had the resources, and above all, his zeal for serving the Lord was unmatched. He just didn’t quite understand what it was God wanted from him.³ Meeting Christ has a way of bringing clarity to things.

In the same way, whenever we find ourselves at a point of conflicting values — when a dilemma of ethics seems to permeate a decision — studying the life of Christ is the best method for clearly judging a right course of action.

Understanding Paul’s life in this way — recognizing the fact that his love of God and his desire to live a life of service did not begin on the Damascus Road — poses a tough question for Christians today. How do we deal with fundamentalists from other faiths? Can we condemn them for holding fast to what they “know” to be true?

Caught in this situation, even as he was being stoned, “Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!’ Then he fell to his knees and cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them!’” (Acts 7:59-60).

Maybe Stephen was just as confused as Saul was. He seems pretty extreme himself. Again, for clarity, I turn to Jesus:

So when they came to the place that is called “The Skull,” they crucified him there, along with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. But Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”
Luke 23:33-34 (NET)

Following Jesus isn’t easy, but as Paul found out, it’s worth the cost.
—

After these things, Jesus [who had been crucified and resurrected] showed himself to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way:

Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas (called “the twin”), Nathanael (of Cana in Galilee), the sons of Zebedee and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved [the ever-modest John] said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.

When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him “Feed my lambs.”

A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.”

He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt … and he said to Jesus, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicated the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.)

After this, Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”

Peter turned and saw John following them … When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?”

Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!”

John 21:1-23, NRSV

This passage has inspired me several times over this week. Jesus’ repetitive command gives Peter an opportunity to make up for his earlier denial of Jesus, but dealing with old failures can still be painful. How ironic that Peter was the one to initiate the fishing trip, yet he was the first one out of the boat, abandoning it altogether to seek after Jesus, just as he did at the beginning. Why were the disciples fishing anyways? And why would Jesus meet them with a simple breakfast? During times of confusion and turmoil, don’t we all go back to what we’re familiar with, trying to recreate comforting moments from our pasts? Jesus understands that and brings the familiar markers of their shared past — the bread and the fish — but he refuses to let Peter get trapped in a rut; Simply reliving the past is not enough. Like Peter, we each have a unique role to play. Occasional fishing trips are alright, but we can’t let comfortable surroundings, or the desire to be like the people around us, distract us from the assignment we’ve been given.

That’s what I read at least. What do you think?

For Easter, Kristen and I travelled to Elizabeth City, a small harbor town at the mouth of the Pasquotank River, near the northern end of the Outer Banks. Our goal was simply to get away from home and be someplace peaceful and quite, knowing this would likely be our last chance to travel together before Samuel is born next month. We stayed at the Culpepper Inn, a prominent local fixture that I had seen many times before but never really visited. We arrived earlier than expected and immediately took a walk through the historic downtown area and strolled the docks. We listened to a pretty good bluegrass duo from Chesapeake fighting for the crowd’s attention at a local eatery and then made our way back to the inn.

Saturday morning we decided to head out to the islands. We drove through Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers made their historic flight, stopped for a delicious order of fresh cut fries and chocolate custard in Kill Devil Hills and then pulled over at Jockey’s Ridge in Nag’s Head. Jockey’s Ridge is the largest active sand dune on the East Coast. The bulk of the dune is likely the same pile of sand the Wright brothers launched their airplane from a few miles up the road in Kitty Hawk, it has just steadily migrated south over the past century. The dune is absolutely huge. The main plateau is probably only about 35 feet high, but the giant table-top of sand literally stretchs on for acres. Hundreds of families with hundreds of kites were already fixed atop the dune when we arrived, along with a few hang gliders. Still, it was easy to find a quite place and settle down in the dry, powdery sand that felt so different from the wet, sticky course, beach sand just a few hundred yards away. We capped the day off with a quick visit to the Currituck light house on the northern end of the island.

The dock at Moth Boat Park in Elizabeth City, where the Pasquotank River pours into the Albermarle Sound on North Carolina's inner coast.

Sunday afternoon we decided to visit the Great Dismal Swamp — a national wildlife refuge that spans the North Carolina-Virginia border. We saw turtles, frogs and a woodpecker during our stroll through the swamp, which isn’t really as dismal and swampy as the name implies. The huge swamp areas on the northern coast of the state are worlds apart from the stagnant, slime-coated, bacteria-laden waters found in the woods in the central part of North Carolina, or in my native South Carolina. The Dismal Swamp is full of clear, blue-hued water that lazily flows to and fro among the forest of cypress trees that engulfs it. Wildlife is abundant.

We had a good visit in Elizabeth City. It was Kristen’s first time seeing the town, and the first chance I have had to explore the streets and creeks that occupied most of my time as an adolescent. I had the joy of living in a variety of locals growing up. Each one had unique advantages and disadvantages. It’s hard to compare my experiences growing up in different places because the first 18 years of life are so full of constant changes in themselves. For the most part, the bulk of my time spent living in each different community also marked a different phase of life for me as a child, adolescent and teenager, so it’s not really fair, or easy, to compare them. Still, all things considered, I think Elizabeth City was by far the most interesting, and simply enjoyable, place that my family brought me to live in. I wouldn’t have a single qualm about moving back, if that is the direction my life ever moves to again.

Visiting the places I have lived before is always a little strange though. I can’t help but to recall the experiences I hold connected with each familiar landscape. I notice how so many things have changed in my absence, while other details seem fixed forever. I never really know how to react when I encounter my past. My life has changed so much over the past few years, when ever I visit a place from my past, I can’t help but to feel that I’m no longer the same person I was when I left. I don’t know whether I want to let myself go to reconnect with my past, or whether I should just explore the city anew, looking for new experiences and new details that I would easily miss if I were only looking for things connected with my earlier life. I always face this dilemma when I visit the places where I grew up; I don’t have the same problem when I visit Blowing Rock, where Kristen and I went to college, got married, began our careers and turned our first apartment into a home. I think the difference has something to do with the fact that the life I built in Blowing Rock was my own, while my life in Elizabeth City, and the many other places I lived growing up, was inseparable from the life my parents built for me — not a bad thing by any means, just the way life is. Moving to Blowing Rock was my choice; the things I did there, the job I had, the house I lived in, were all my choices as well; perhaps most importantly, leaving Blowing Rock was my choice. The fact that I wasn’t in control of most of my earlier life — my parents decided where I would live, what I could and couldn’t do with my time and when I would move again — greatly affects the lens through which I view my past.

At least that’s what I think today. Who knows.

So, now that you’ve made it through all of that, enjoy a sampling of my shots from our holiday weekend in and around Elizabeth City. I know this gallery is way too big. Click any image or thumbnail to pull up a full-size viewer that will let you click through the entire collection at your leisure.

*I (David Anderson, Jr.) am the original author of all of the images connected with this post except for the final picture, which was kindly taken by our waitress at the Marina Restaurant in Elizabeth City. Enjoy!

Last weekend Kristen and I found ourselves in downtown Raleigh on the first truly beautiful, warm Saturday of the year. We had a purpose to our visit, and it was not photography, but I couldn’t resist trying to get a few shots off. I have been longing to just take a day to myself and explore the city, gathering pictures of people as they go about their lives. I want to improve my portrait techniques, and I want to take more portraits of real people, doing real things, in an effort to better represent real life. Part of my problem is I don’t afford myself the time to go out to practice photography simply for photography’s sake. I bring a camera along when I’m out for another purpose and end up feeling awkward when I try to break away from that purpose to figure out how to set up a good shot. My other problem is I feel awkward taking pictures of strangers who just see the weird guy with the camera and must be wondering what he’s up to; but I love looking at the simple beauty in life, at the way people interact with one another, and sometimes that’s best appreciated as an outsider looking in. Some of these photos were cropped with a viewfinder, most were simple quick-shot street photography. My favorite ended up being a serendipitous hip shot taken outside of the Museum of North Carolina History. There are four people in the picture, a group of guys, maybe family, maybe friends, all sharing a quick meal. The camera only found one face though, and that face is what caught my attention right away. If the picture had been of the men laughing and finishing their hotdogs would you have even noticed the boy sandwiched between his guardians? I couldn’t have set it up any better.

These are difficult questions to be sure; questions that have led people to hate God — or in some cases to give up on him completely — since the beginning.

For me, the answer to this hardship lies not in examining God’s indifference to human suffering, but in God’s love of the entire human creature. Of all the wonderful talents, skills and gifts God has given the human race, the greatest one of all — the crux that everything else rest on — is freedom.

William Sloane Coffin, who died in 2006 after a long career of championing social justice for humans everywhere, answered this question better than I could ever hope to. Coffin uses a well-known teaching of Jesus to explain the problem of free will, and why God thinks it is so important in our lives.

The teaching is commonly called The Parable of the Prodigal Son; the NET Bible calls it The Parable of the Compassionate Father, which I think is a better fit. The entire text of this lesson can be read here if you are not familiar with it. In a nutshell, it is a story about two sons. One asks his father for an early inheritance, takes his father’s wealth and runs off to have a good time. When the money runs out, he comes back home, broken and ashamed; Yet his father greets him with a hug and a shout of rejoicing. The other son stayed at home the whole time, lived a responsible life and tried to follow the letter of the law. When his brother returned, this hard-working lad was furious that his father would even accept him back into the household.
      *It’s important to note the father’s forgiveness does not include re-dividing the responsible brother’s share of the estate to make up for the folly of the prodigal; He simply showered his lost son with generous love, just as he always had.*

But now on to Coffin:

We can use this freedom God has afforded us in many ways. We have the freedom to escape from the world; to ignore suffering, ignore the pain that inevitably follows when we pour ourselves out to others in relationship. We can live in isolation, comforting ourselves with the knowledge that God has redeemed us already. We have the freedom to make our own way. To carve out our own vision of success and pleasure in creation, bending the world to our will. Or, as Coffin concludes, perhaps we have been given freedom not to throw our lives away, but to give them away to one another. To give them away to reconciliation, to forgiveness and to love, just as Christ gave his.

How will you spend your freedom today?

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?”

And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

This past weekend, I spent 25 hours in downtown Raleigh with a group of other divinity school students participating in a poverty simulation. It gave me a small taste of what it feels like to be helpless in a city without a dollar to my name. We slept outside, rummaged through thrift store handouts and trash cans and somehow made our way through the weekend.

We also made a few new friends along the way. I met Willard, a 59-year-old retired mail carrier (probably 60 years old now, Happy Birthday Willard!) who wanted to go back to college just for fun, but needed a little help on his entrance exam. We talked about writing for a while before he had to hurry into the soup kitchen to be sure he had a bit of warmth to get him through the rainy night outdoors. “I’ve got a pretty nice sleeping bag,” Willard said. I remembered him later that night as I scoured for a spot to set up my synthetic-fiber, 15º backcountry fortress from REI. I wonder just how nice Willard’s sleeping bag really is.

I met Raheem, a guy about my age who moved to Raleigh from Philadelphia to be closer to some of his family, just to find out they didn’t really want to be closer to him. He’s spent months searching the newspapers and internet for job listings, but hasn’t found anybody willing to take a chance on him yet, despite his incredible gift for rhetoric — “I can sell you anything!” Raheem told me as he gave his only sweatshirt away to another friend who felt chilled at the thought of spending one more night alone in the park.

I met Steve, a New York native who spent decades building a good life with his wife in North Carolina. Then she died unexpectedly in 2003. Steve got by alright until 2008 when he lost his job. He didn’t have anybody else to turn to, but that wasn’t a big deal. He could make it through. But the months passed on and he still couldn’t find any work in Raleigh; he couldn’t sell the home he had spent the last half of his life working to pay off. A year later, this hardworking, well-spoken, clean-cut, “normal” guy found himself without a place to stay when the banker came to collect his due. Now he hangs around City Market.

I learned a lot this weekend, but the thing that has stuck with me most is something I’ve known for a very long time, I just tend to forget it when the situation makes it convenient for me:

Early in my undergraduate work, I wrote an in-depth essay on stereotypes. The primary thought that drove that paper was my determination that stereotypes are a necessary evil. Without them, we would simply be overwhelmed by the abundance of information, of power and detail in the natural world that we try to make our way through. We would be unable to function if we tried to truly understand every individual that comes our way, beginning with a blank palette; so we use stereotypes to help us cope.

Unfortunately, though, our stereotypes also blind us to the beauty of the real world God has made for us. We go through our lives like we’re sitting in on an original performance of Beethoven’s 5th, choosing instead to slouch down in the back row and listen to Spongebob Squarepants singing on our iPods.

We have stereotypes. Often times we’re aware of them. We may even try to put them aside occasionally and get to know someone for who they really are. But I would venture to say that of all the stereotypes we hold, those that protect us from the homeless are the last ones we are willing to give up.

Looking Ahead

So, my photography has nearly dried up completely. On the way to the airport, at the end of my vacation in Colorado last summer, my camera fell out of its bag, landed on its lens and took some damage. Whenever I felt the need to take a picture over the past few months, I have typically turned to my iPhone, which is a terribly addicting habit I plan to break.

I’ve gotten a new lens for my camera body, which survived the fall, and I hope to get back to taking pictures. Image making is such a stress relief for me. It doesn’t carry any of the burden or stresses of writing, and typically I feel much more satisfied with the results. Don’t take this to mean I think my photography is anything special. I just enjoy making it and looking back at it more than I do my writing.

My new lens is a Canon 50mm f/1.4 prime. It’s my only focusable lens, so it is the one I will be using for the foreseeable future. I haven’t used a camera without a zoom lens since I got my Polaroid Captiva for Christmas in fourth grade. I have heard photo-type people say over the years that using prime lenses is one way to become a better photographer, helping you focus more on the subject of the picture rather than worrying so much about the cropping. It also helps you appreciate a good point-of-view more, because you have to move your body to get it right. I don’t know if this will turn out to be helpful or not, but I do know that if you’re looking for high-quality optics, prime lenses are a heck of a lot cheaper than zooms. That was my primary motivation. I wanted to get a lens with crisp optics, a sharp focus and a wide aperture, and the only way I could afford one that fit the bill was to give up something — so no more zoom for me.

So far the lens has been great. It’s my first experience getting to use a very wide aperture, which opens up a whole knew world of possibilities for image making. Now I can take pictures in very low light, outdoors at night or inside with little artificial light, and avoid having to use the flash, preserving more of the natural colors of the image, not to mention the mood created by varied lighting.

One example of this is my night-time shots taken a few days ago in the snow. I got these pictures in my front yard, hours after sunset, using only my porch light for illumination. The pictures may not be spectacular, but doing shots like this without cranking out the ISO to an unnatural level would have been completely impossible with my old setup.

I hope to take some photo trips to downtown Raleigh, Durham or a nearby park soon, but I haven’t found much time for getting away this close to midterms. For now I’m just cruising the block trying to look at things from new perspectives. Here’s a few of my recent favorites.

The Old Testament still has much to tell us about human nature and our relationship with the Eternal God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus was a student of the Old Testament. He diligently studied the stories of Moses and the prophets, meditated on the word of the Lord and used the scriptures to proclaim his message of salvation in the synagogues and side streets. Had he simply been born with a photographic recall of the scriptures, he would not be able to sympathize with us as we struggle through our studies today. Likewise, a solid understanding of the Old Testament scriptures is imperative to fully understanding the teachings of Jesus. The conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus recorded in the Gospel of John is probably the most oft-quoted passage in Christian circles, summing up the core message of salvation in a single verse or two — we are redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus alone, the ultimate example of God’s love for creation. All we have to do is have faith.

“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:14-16, NIV

Jesus spoke these words to Nicodemus, who, as a member of the Jewish ruling council and a student of scripture himself, already knew something of the power of faithful obedience to God. The other members of the Sanhedrin felt threatened by Jesus and had begun plotting against him, but Nicodemus recognized something very special about him. (Their entire conversation can be read here.) This reference to the Old Testament story of the Nehushtan may have seemed baffling at first, but Jesus mentions it for a specific reason.

The Nehushtan, or snake-on-a-pole, was a symbol of God’s healing grace, of his mercy and love for his people. With images of God’s miraculous show of force against the Egyptian Empire still fresh on their minds, the Israelites were wandering in the desert, under the guidance of Moses, in search of the land YAHWEH had promised them. They had had ups and downs, but time and time again, God had proven that so long as they remained obedient and fearful of him, they would be protected and provided for. In fact, the Israelites had just won a tremendous victory over the hostile Canaanites who had been terrorizing them. Appropriately, the Israelites gave YAHWEH the credit for their victory. While their shouts of victory and praise were still hanging in the air, however, the Israelites began to grow discontent, speaking out against God, complaining to their leader Moses and reminiscing about the good-ole days when they were content and happy slaves in a foreign land.

Then the snakes came. Slowly at first. Slinking out from under the desert rocks and leaving their mark on the careless men who got too close. Then more came. They were everywhere. It seemed no one could avoid being bitten.

Perhaps they shouldn’t have been so quick to turn their backs on the Lord who had delivered them from Egypt, cared for them in the desert and thwarted the attacks of the Canaanite king. What to do now? Would the Creator of the Universe take them back under his wing, yet again?

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”

Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.”

So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.

Numbers 21:4-9, NIV

So once again, God’s people recognized their own insufficiencies and turned to him. Once again, he redeemed them.

He didn’t do all they asked for, though. The people wanted God to remove the snakes from the land. They wanted him to eliminate pain and suffering from their world; To give them a carefree life. God knew if he simply took away the snakes — if he removed the cause of hurt and trouble in the world — he would also be taking away the freedom of his people. He would be infringing on their freewill and they would no longer be able to turn to him and seek him out of their own volition. No. That was out of the question.

What he did do, though, was provide a way to ease their suffering. He offered them a way out, but they would have to choose to accept it individually, and on faith.

The Messiah, Jesus, understood his mission was to become a similar vehicle for God’s love, but in a much more profound way. He must still be shamed and put on display for the people to see, but when we look upon him in faith, we are healed completely. We are made new. He doesn’t just remove physical toxins and pain that would cause us harm; he purges the blemishes of our soul, forgives us our sins and gives us new life, eternal life, in him.

Yesterday morning as I was getting ready for school, I glanced out the window into the backyard and was totally caught off guard by a steady stream of snow charging towards the ground. I had heard there may be some snow in areas west of us, but the latest weather report I saw for our neighborhood called for temperatures in the 40s and no precipitation. Granted, that had been a few days before.

When I lived in Blowing Rock, checking the weather forecast was a daily — and often hourly — ritual. Unpredictability was the nature of the game, and a little change here or there could have a huge impact on my plans for the day or business flow at work.

Working at a newspaper, I saw it as part of my responsibility to stay as informed as possible about as many things as possible, including national news and politics, local government, behind-the-scene politics, crime, social happenings, school issues, and weather. Always trying to stay a few steps ahead of the game has a way of sapping the excitement out of surprises. Now that I no longer spend my days in a newsroom, I try to avoid the over-saturation of information that has characterized my life for so long. Sometimes, I may even go a whole week (or two) without glancing at the weather report. I might not be able to get by with this in some places, but for right now, facing a few rainy days here and there without an umbrella is well worth the occasional surprise snowfall…not to mention the peace of mind.

That being said, I’m not completely sold on the new look either. I really like the functionality of the new design, but a part of me says it might be too flashy. Take a look at the old site and see what you think. Which design is better? What works, what doesn’t? Don’t hold anything back.

By the way, my favorite new feature is my photo gallery scripting. Be sure and check it out. The need to display photos in a more professional manner was the primary factor that led to the new site, but the gallery feature can work fine with either design.

Reflecting pool at Butler Chapel

Following months of careful prayer, long hours of personal reflection and a host of conversations with my own spiritual mentors, a short voice mail left on my mobile phone Friday put my mind at ease and marked the beginning of a new phase of my life. My application had been accepted. In January, I will begin working towards a Master of Divinity degree at Campbell University in Buies Creek.

Since I began the application process nearly three months ago, I have known without a doubt that God has called me to better equip myself as I work to serve his purpose with my life; pursuing formal theological training was the clear step to take, and looking back, it is obvious to me that the Lord brought me to this place for this purpose from the beginning of my journey.

I originally made this Web site to present myself and my work to potential employers. I quit my job at the Sanford Herald in October and, while I will not place any limits on what tasks God may use me for in the future, I don’t plan on looking for another newspaper job anytime soon. I hope to revamp the site in the near future to coincide with the new direction my life is taking, but in the meantime I would like to share my admissions essay with you to hopefully answer any questions about the circumstances that have brought me to this point. As always, feel free to contact me if you want to talk more.

–David

Butler Chapel at Campbell

As a Christian saved by Christ’s love, I have no greater task before me than spreading the truth of God’s love to those who don’t believe — either because they haven’t heard, or because their hearts have been hardened in such a way as to keep them from truly understanding the message of Christ. From the time I dedicated my own life to Christ I have hoped that everything I do, whatever job I work at, wherever I live and whatever circumstances I find myself in, that I live my life in such a way that others would see Christ working in me. I believe this is the duty of every Christian, and that everyone can be an effective piece of the body of Christ by seeking to please Him everyday. I also believe there is an unprecedented need for spiritual support in the world today, and I want to equip myself as well as possible — spiritually, mentally and physically — for a life of daily service to the Lord. I feel sure I will find that preparation at Campbell University.

I was blessed with the opportunity to grow up in a Christian home. I learned the importance of daily prayer, Bible study and Christian fellowship from my parents by example. When I was 7 years old I made the decision to give my life to Christ. I approached my father (who was ministering at First Baptist of Four Oaks in his first position as a senior pastor) one evening after dinner and told him that I wanted to be baptized. We spent some time talking about the decision and what it would mean for my life before he joyously consented to baptize me.

I remained active in church throughout my childhood, but the next significant milestone in my spiritual life came as I entered high school when I began to be very involved with the youth group at my church. Over a period of two years I attended several youth conferences with my church, including one hosted by evangelist David Nasser. Nasser was raised in a Muslim society and was forced, by his father’s choice, to sever ties with his family when he abandoned the teachings of Islam and committed his life to Christ. As a teenager who had spent most of my life in the Southeastern United States, I had little first hand knowledge of the sacrifice many must make to follow Christ, and Nasser’s lecture opened my eyes up to the power of the gospel. During this time I also participated in summer mission trips through the World Changers program of the SBC. Short-term mission trips to Joliet, Ill. and Birmingham, Ala. showed me how effective spiritual ministry can be when it is coupled with programs that meet the needs of the lost — not because people will follow anyone offering a handout, but because the effort and resources expended to care for strangers demonstrates the reality of our faith in a way people can understand. These programs showed me how real God’s presence could be in my everyday life and challenged me to take my faith to the next level.

At this point I began seriously focusing on regular, daily spiritual devotion and prayer. For the first time I understood what it was to have a truly personal relationship with the Lord. I started turning to God not just when I was curious about spiritual issues of heaven and sin but for real world issues I dealt with at home and school. I began to take a leadership position in my youth group at Jonesboro Heights Baptist in Sanford, serving on the youth committee of the church, leading Wednesday night worship for my peers whenever our youth minister was absent and delivering the morning sermon on youth Sunday. As I was preparing to finish my high school career, several people in my church and in the community spoke with me about entering the ministry. They told me to seek God’s guidance in the decisions I made about my future and encouraged me to explore a career in the ministry. I knew how taxing the work of a pastor could be on an individual. My father would frequently leave the house in the middle of the night to aid a struggling church member and cut vacations short to return home to comfort a family coping with an unexpected death. As an adolescent I had made up my mind that this was not the life I wanted for myself and my family, and as I finished high school and laid out my future I was already numb to any suggestion that would put me on that path.

The summer before I began college I traveled to Surabaya, Indonesia with a small group of youth from my church, my future-wife Kristen included. This was my first experience overseas and the most involved outreach program I had been a part of. I saw the need for strong Christian families to be in the world, sharing their faith with the unchurched but also living it out each day with the compassion and true love of humanity that only comes from knowing Christ. I experienced the challenge of openly sharing my faith and limited knowledge of the scriptures with those who were raised to reject Christianity. I understood the reward that comes with knowing that I have allowed Christ to work in me, bringing others to know Him and understand His teachings for the first time. Our experience living and working with career missionaries in Indonesia led Kristen and I to think about pursuing a career in missions — not that it would be our clear path when we entered college, but we would give it equal consideration.

I continued to mature spiritually during my time in college. I was blessed with the opportunity to learn from professors who did not make an effort to hide their faith, despite teaching in a public university. I learned not to separate my own faith from academic endeavors, as any knowledge gained about creation is knowledge of God’s work in our world. In college I truly developed a passion for knowledge and for understanding the human condition. I majored in journalism, thinking it would be a career path that would allow me to live a life of constant learning while providing a critical service to society.

After graduation Kristen and I (now married) looked for an entryway to the mission field. We were both willing and eager to travel abroad and dedicate ourselves to serving God by meeting the needs of the lost, but wherever we turned, doors seemed to close. We felt that as Christians, our first responsibility above all else was to share Christ’s message with the lost. We desperately wanted to go, but for a variety of circumstantial reasons, it seemed that God was keeping us here. We changed direction and started looking for work in the fields we had prepared for in college. We moved to Dunn, N.C. when I was offered a position as a reporter at The Daily Record.

I enjoyed my job there and I learned a great deal about government and society, but I did not feel satisfied in my work. My position was cut after nine months. Our first thought was to explore our options in the mission field again. Just as before, new circumstances beyond our control kept us at home. I was offered a job as a feature writer at The Sanford Herald and returned to working as a journalist. Through my interactions with people at work, the Lord has opened my eyes to the spiritual hunger of the people in the community. Over the course of several months I began to feel the Lord urging me through my personal devotions to prepare for a full-time career in the ministry. I shared this sense of direction with my wife, and within the next week the calling was confirmed through unplanned conversations I had with two former youth ministers, friends and our pastor at First Baptist Dunn.

After talking with one of my former youth pastors, Nate Leonard, who is an alumni of the Campbell Divinity School, as well as other people connected to the university, I realized that Campbell is clearly the place God wants me to be as I prepare myself for the ministry. I do not know if the Lord will lead me to the mission field, to work in youth ministry or to lead a church as a pastor, but I do believe that His hand has been involved in every decision that has brought me to this point in my life — including the decision to work in the newspaper industry for two years, where I gained an insight into society that would be difficult to come across in any other line of work, as well as the chain of events that brought Kristen and I to live in Benson, just down the road from Campbell Divinity School.

There are certainly specific areas of ministry I would prefer to work in and I can identify the jobs my current skill set qualifies me to do, but I do not want to place any limits on what God will use me for in the future. My hope is to enter the Divinity School at Campbell University in January with a completely open mind, to focus on the tasks immediately before me — preparing for a life of ministry — and to let God lead me to the next step, wherever that would be.

The best thing about the plaza is that it gives the Capitol District its first Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Four identical, smoked glass cottages sit at each corner of the square. Three of the buildings are slated to hold a Jimmy Johns Sandwich shop, a shish kabob restaurant and an arts & crafts center, but none of them are close to being ready to open. For now, doughnuts and coffee are the main attraction as the new Krispy Kreme stays busy churning out sweet snacks to passersby.

My world just got a whole lot bigger.

Kristen and I saw the heart beat of our new baby for the first time today, blowing away the cloud of doubt we had harbored since the doctor first confirmed the pregnancy two weeks ago. The little guy (or gal) is about the size of a large olive, but it has a healthy heart rate of 166 beats per minute.

My heart, on the other hand, nearly stopped this morning when the news that I was going to be a father began to sink in.

It was a very surreal moment to say the least. I have always known that I wanted to be a father. When I was in college laying out the blue print for my life, I made a little note in the corner to remind me that on the priority list, “being a good dad” ranks way above “landing a staff job with National Geographic” or “paying off the mortgage.” Just like those other goals, though, I didn’t really expect this one to come to fruition so soon. I certainly didn’t want to put it off for too long, it just seemed like something that would take care of itself eventually.

And it did. Now I can’t imagine a better time to bring a new life into the world.

An Annotated Guide

South Core Sound.

For a variety of reasons I won’t begin to mention here, the past two months have been the most trying stretch of life that I have dealt with in several years. I’ve drawn little pleasure from writing. On the few occasions that I did feel like jotting my thoughts down I was simply too discouraged to find the right words.

But I have a good life. God has truly blessed me with far more than I could ever earn by my own hands, and I’m grateful that I have the presence of mind to use the hard situations as an opportunity to examine my life and refocus my path to keep me working towards the ultimate goal, which is to glorify Him in all that I do.

In truth, my hard times aren’t that hard at all.

Cape Lookout at sunset.

Still, the view of Boulder, the surrounding plains and the mountains in the distance was incredible.

We found the Rockies today. Heather was nice enough to lend her VolksWagon to me and Kristen for the day, so we took a road trip.

We drove north of Boulder, through the village of Estes Park and into the Rocky Mountain National Park. We spent four hours driving 29 miles along Trail Ridge Road – the main scenic highway through the park. We came out of the park alongside Grand Lake – a centuries old mining town and resort area, grabbed lunch at Maverick’s Grill and then hooked up with I-70 to head back to Boulder.

The mountains in the Front Range near Boulder are unlike any I’ve seen before, with their red-brown faces and prarie grass hills, but while we were in Colorado Kristen and I really wanted to get a glimpse of the craggy snow-capped peaks that our nation’s western states are famous for. The Rocky Mountain National Park didn’t dissappoint.

What has really stood out to me about the Rockies is the diversity of the terrain. In one drive we saw stony flat mesas; pale red cliffs of dried lava; 8,000-foot peaks covered in spruce and fir trees standing alongside barren, 13,000-foot mountains still cloaked in a remnant of the ice and snow that fell months earlier, all separated by endless plains of prarie grass and piles of clay boulders that loomed over our lime-green Beetle.

Seeing the Rockies for the first time, I instinctively want to compare them to the mountain ranges I’ve already experienced. At first glance, I want to say they are more impressive than the Appalachians and not quite as breathtaking as the Alps. Neither of those statements are really true. The more I travel and experience places, the more I realize just how unique every spot on Earth really is.

For a skier or rockclimber, the size of the Rockies will certainly add to their draw. For the casual observer, day hiker, photographer, vacationer or general mountain nut, I would have to say that the mountains of Colorado are no more or less attractive than their East Coast counterparts. They are just completely different, and definitely worth seeing for yourself.

Neither of us had been anywhere near the Rockies before and we were a little surprised that we didn’t see a single mountain on our way to Denver. We were even more surprised that we didn’t see any on our way from the airport to our hosts’ apartment in Westminster.

After living in the Appalachian Mountains for four years, I had imagined Colorado to be just like the mountainous areas of the East Coast, only more so – twice as windy, twice as cool, with scenery twice as dramatic. Not neccessarily so. For the few people out there who, like me one day ago, don’t already know, the eastern half of Colorado is as flat as Kansas and hotter than North Carolina. The high today in Boulder was almost ten degrees warmer than at our home in Benson. These surprises weren’t dissappointments though. It’s always exciting to experience a new place, and to gain so much new knowledge off the bat reminds me why I wanted to travel in the first place (besides catching up with great friends, which was the main point of this trip).

This morning we did get to see some mountains. The foothills of the Rockies are just visible from Sam’s and Heather’s balcony. Heather took Kristen and I to see the Flatirons on the outskirts of Boulder while Sam was at work. We hiked around the base, but we got too late of a start and didn’t bring enough water to make it to the top. The mountains are not the image of snow-capped peaks and spruce trees that come to mind when thinking of the Rockies but they are just as dramatic. They are called the Flatirons because three of the large rock outcroppings look like the bottom sides of clothes irons.

After the hike we met up with Sam, lounged around at the pool, fried fish and played a friendly game of monopoly. I won.

What got me back on the fairway today was a guy’s morning out with my cousin Rhett and his buddies to celebrate his upcoming wedding. Kristen and I got into town at 1:30 this morning. My brother Jacob woke me with a phone call at 7:20 to tell me they had booked an 8 a.m. tee time. I got to the golf course tired and hungry, but I’m so glad I went.

I’m very excited to see Rhett and Sayla take the first step in building a new life together tomorrow afternoon. Rhett is just the second person in our generation of my family to get married, and I’m thrilled to see others recognize the true blessing that marriage can be once you have met the person that God created for you to share your life with. I want to support them in whatever way I can. If that means stumbling through 18 holes of golf to show him a good time, I’m there.

I visited the science museum often as a child when my dad would take me and my younger brothers strolling through on Saturdays while my mom was at work. At that time, the coolest things in the museum were a fake T-Rex skull in the foyer and an impressive blue whale skeleton that hung high overhead in its own exhibit hall. Years ago the museum underwent a major renovation, and though I had stepped in from time to time, I hadn’t taken the opportunity to really soak it all up before.

Obviously bored with his audience, this guy made his own perfectly sized hammock to chill out in.

One of the highlights of the museum is a prominent exhibit hall with a fully-developed dinosaur display. The old T-Rex model still greets guests as they walk up the stairs, but the star of the show is a full size display of Acrocanthosaurus. The dinosaur supposedly lived 45 million years before the first Tyrannosaur arrived on the scene. More importantly, “Acro” as he’s affectionally called at the museum, lived in the southern states from Texas to Maryland (including North Carolina) while his larger, younger and better-known brethren hung out on the West Coast.

Acro circling his prey.

The skeleton at the museum in Raleigh is only 53 percent authentic, with the rest being cast models of bone. Still, this is the most complete Acro remains found to date. Only four sets of Acro bones have ever been found, making this dinosaur one of the rarest known to science. At just 40 feet long, Acro doesn’t have the size of T-Rex, but he made up for it with an aggression all his own. While T-Rex is largely believed to be a scavenger, Acro was taking on dinos twice his size to grab a bite of lunch.

As strongly as I believe our state needs to keep a better grasp of how they spend money and reign in some dollars that aren’t being used in the best way, I am very proud to have such fine museums in our capital city. These projects represent a great use of state funds because they are offered to the benefit of everyone, everyday, free of charge. Most of the exhibits, including the $3 million Acro skelton, are funded through donations and grants from companies and individuals. The state keeps the doors open, the lights on and the payroll staffed with experts who can educate the citizenry — school children, seniors and guys like me who just like to know stuff — whenever they take the time to ask.

An open rainforest exhibit, staffed by teenaged-volunteers, is planted on the top floor of the museum and is free and open to the public. A similar attraction cost tourists $13 each in Myrtle Beach before business dropped off and it shut down.

Kristen and Acro